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Laurels/Les lauriers by Daniel H. Dugas


A wonderfully subversive new videopoem by Canadian poet, digital artist and musician Daniel H. Dugas, who introduced it in a public post on Facebook:

I have been thinking for a while about the mechanics and implications of submission fees when applying to moving image festivals. I favour the open model, meaning that submissions are free and no prizes are given. I feel that sharing with others is enough. I admit that it is always nice to win a prize, but if everybody has to lose something in the process, it might not be the way to go.

So, I made a videopoem about fees and laurels (see link below for the English and the French versions). During my research I stumbled upon Stop Charging (And Paying) Submission Fees by Martha Knox, an artist from Philadelphia. It is enlightening and to the point. I encourage you to read it. It might change the way you see the world. https://wordsonwoodcuts.blogspot.com/…/stop-charging…

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Synopsis đ˜“đ˜ąđ˜¶đ˜łđ˜Šđ˜­đ˜Ž

In Ancient Rome, laurel wreaths were worn on the head to symbolize triumph. The meaning is the same today, but if you want to get laurels for cinematic prowess, you must wage your artistic war on screen and pay a submission fee. Then you might get the ‘Best’ laurel for the category you applied under. Of course, some festivals don’t subscribe to this “Pay and Play” philosophy, and that’s excellent! And then, some festivals don’t charge entry fees and will even pay the selected artists!

Synopsis 𝘓𝘩𝘮 đ˜“đ˜ąđ˜¶đ˜łđ˜Ș𝘩𝘳𝘮

Pour les Romains de l’AntiquitĂ©, les couronnes de laurier Ă©taient portĂ©es sur la tĂȘte pour symboliser le triomphe. La signification est la mĂȘme aujourd’hui, mais si vous voulez obtenir des lauriers pour vos prouesses cinĂ©matographiques, vous devez mener votre guerre artistique Ă  l’Ă©cran et payer des droits d’inscription. Vous obtiendrez alors peut-ĂȘtre le prix du “meilleur” dans la catĂ©gorie Ă  laquelle vous avez postulĂ©. Évidemment, il existe des festivals qui ne souscrivent pas Ă  cette philosophie de « Pay and Play » et c’est tant mieux ! Il y a mĂȘme des festivals qui n’exigent pas de frais d’inscriptions et vont mĂȘme payer les artistes sĂ©lectionnĂ©s !

Î˜ÏÎźÎœÎżÏ‚/Lament by Miltos Sachtouris

A 2018 film animated and directed by Afroditi Bitzouni with music and sound design by Kyriakos Charalampides and Giuliano Anzani, featuring the voice of the Greek poet Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2005) and an English translation by Danai Daska in subtitles. Here’s Bitzouni’s description:

Î˜ÏÎźÎœÎżÏ‚ (Lament) is a short animated film based on the poem, that was crafted by Miltos Sachtouris and was included in the collection ΣΩΡΑΓΙΔΑ Îź Η ΟΓΔΟΗ ΣΕΛΗΝΗ. 

This short animated piece aspires to narrate a transition from the present world to a better one. The story line includes incidents that are strongly related to war and lead to the end of the present; recreating a future imaginary world. That way, we emphasize on the diachronic character of the poem.

The visual part is composed of an illustrated sequence inspired by the poem and crafted with textures from books and old images. Words are translated into characters and abstract environments floating into blank or vivid colors, reflecting the poem’s rhythm and creating a storyline. The various materials are connected through motion events that separate the poem in two main sections; the section referring to the present and the one referring to the future.

The sound is composed using recordings of flute, foley and analog synthesizers that were later digitally processed. Through this method we attempt to provide a backbone to the poet’s narration, amplifying the textural motion of the video. 

Aiming to combine the existed material with alternative and contemporary mediums, we invite the audience to preserve and experience the poem through multiple senses.

Î˜ÏÎźÎœÎżÏ‚/Lament (click through and scroll down for the text of the poem in Greek and English)

We’ve shared two of Bitzouni’s other animations over the years, but missed some good ones. Catch up on them all on Vimeo.

Extract from ‘Hellseason’ (‘Une Saison en Enfer’ by Arthur Rimbaud as a custom Broforce level) by Jon Stone

British writer, editor and researcher Jon Stone has just uploaded this experiment, created as part of his research for Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games (De Gruyter, 2022: Volume 3 in the series Video Games and the Humanities), noting in the description that “I wanted to see if I could rewrite the opening of this long Rimbaud poem as a playable action sequence. In the end, I decided it wasn’t working — but it makes for a fun video.” He has a new essay in The Conversation going into more detail about the project: “Can a poem be adapted into a video game? Here’s what I learned from trying.”

Perhaps the most longstanding case of existing poetry being used as the basis for a game is Hyakunin Isshu Karuta, a competitive Japanese card game in which players match the different parts of poems from the Hyakunin Isshu haiku anthology. The actions of the players here embody the principle of “two worlds in one breath”, which some have argued is central to haiku.

But with the plethora of digital game-making tools now available to poets, as well as the enduring literary penchant for modernising classical texts – see Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2011), or Simon Armitage’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2000) – it’s likely that we’ll begin to see more efforts to convert classical poems into video games.

One example is Dante’s Inferno (2010) by Visceral Games. This third-person adventure re-imagines Dante’s circles of hell as battle arenas, honouring some of the poem’s more memorable imagery, such as “the infernal hurricane that never rests”. Inevitably, though, in the case of violent action games, it’s the narrative arc of the story which is the focus.

On the more experimental end, Gotta Eat the Plums! with William Carlos Williams by Calum Rodger remakes Williams’ poem This Is Just To Say (1934) as a miniature role playing game for the Game Boy. The original poem can be interpreted as concerned with the everyday perversity of human desires, about which we are simultaneously apologetic and boastful (plums, like all juicy fruit, being symbolically linked to forbidden knowledge and sex).

But Rodger adds subtle commentary to this symbolism. He gives the player the option to refrain from eating the plums three times, using up their willpower gauge until they are eventually compelled to consume them.

In a Minute There is Time (2023) by Aster Fialla, meanwhile, is a short text-based game using T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) as its springboard. It plays specifically on the theme of time, forcing the player down various avenues using a countdown timer. This puts them physically in the position of Prufrock, who is haunted and vexed by the inevitability of death.

Read the rest. Discussing the Rimbaud video, he says:

This attempt uses a flaming tropical jungle, replete with machine guns and exploding barrels, as a metaphysical representation of Rimbaud’s psychological turmoil, with the player battling toward self-understanding. It ran aground, however, due to the difficulty of following the poem alongside the colourful action sequences.

Video game adaptations of poems are not impossible. They do, however, need to leave space for readers to engage with the specific effects of language.

Experimenting further, I found the video game genres which admit the presence of poetry most readily are those which require careful calibration and thoughtful probing from the player. For example, puzzle games, story-rich role playing games, games of exploration and visual novels. Where the two mediums can be integrated, there is great potential for a doubling up of their powers – video games’ ability to draw us into alternative worlds and poetry’s propensity to speak lasting truths.

Water for Canaries by Doyali Islam

View on Vimeo.

the last singing descendants of a burning world
the first heirs of a new

So often, the poems most effective at making a political statement are not overtly political at all. Here’s a 2019 animation by Suzie Hanna, an Emerita Professor of Animation at Norwich University of the Arts whose “current personal focus in research and practice is poetry animation made in collaboration,” according to her website. I found a good micro-review on the Palestine Cinema website:

How can we witness a world in which the moon and the drone hang in the same sky? What can the evolution of dinosaur into bird tell us about human survival? In “water for canaries”, award-winning Toronto poet Doyali Islam contemplates an Associated Press photograph taken during a ceasefire within the July 2014 bombing of Beit Hanoun. Islam’s poem acts as solemn witness but also achieves a moment of lift-off in which Palestinians reveal their extraordinary courage, resilience, and mercy. UK animator Suzie Hanna has collaborated to create a short poetry film using hand-cut stencils and paint to emphasize the chaotic atmosphere and to celebrate the fragility of life amid destruction. doyali-islam.com & suziehanna.com

The poem “water for canaries” is from Doyali Islam’s 2019 poetry book, heft, published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada.

Here’s the link to heft. Doyali Islam’s website seems to be offline, but here’s a good bio. “Water for Canaries” wasn’t the only poem from heft to get adapted into a poetry film; “Letter” had three different adaptations for the online Visible Poetry Project in 2019, including one by Moving Poems’ own Jane Glennie: see here. And we’ve shared a number of Suzie Hanna’s animations over the years.

scrambled transmission #3 by Matt Mullins

This month, American writer and poetry film artist Matt Mullins released a new author-made video poem on his Vimeo channel, titled “scrambled transmission #3.” It’s the most recent work from Mullins, who took second place at this year’s Filmetry 24: The Poetics of Cinema with his film, “Janet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz,” which is based on a poem by Marsha de la O and was previously profiled by Moving Poems.

“scrambled transmission #3” leads with an interesting soundscape, one which reflects the poem’s title, by way of a fuzzy, mechanical, radio-out-of-tune loop. It pairs well with the black and white found footage. The film’s opening image highlights a compelling fusion of insect and machine, and its following frames continue riffing on this same visual theme, which often make use of repetition. This piece also uses intertitles, so between the footage and its filter and the text on screen, “scrambled transmission #3” makes direct connections with the silent film era.

Film Still: “scrambled transmission #3”

The poem itself, voice-overed by Mullins, evokes something of Hunter S. Thompson in its themes and tone: a third-person narrative in fragments highlighting mundane acts of violence and estrangement on a “typical atypical day,” mind-altering substances, memory, and American underground art subculture. Overall, the links between the insect world and the human psyche are made quite clear through the poem’s intertitles, voice-over, and found footage. I also thought that the delivery of the poem, particularly its cadence and sense of addled urgency, vaguely recalled the Beat Poets.

As for the filmmaker himself, Mullins’ description of his latest poetry film is refreshingly simple, as he writes: “Some things, one hopes, are self-explanatory.”

Film Still: “scrambled transmission #3”

View the videopoem here.

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